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Casually, Kon brushed some lingering dust off the front of his jacket, putting on the most public-facing smile he could muster, exhaustion clinging to his limbs like the weight of a heavy wet blanket. His sunglasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, and he was sure that his hair was all over the place by now (anything but presentable). He’d probably hate the pictures in the newspaper tomorrow.
But the press always had questions to ask, dying to get a chance to talk to at least one of the superheroes in a big battle (preferably more well-known superheroes, but Kon was usually a bit more talkative, as much as he hated talking to reporters). And Kon just happened to land on the more intact portion of the street, where it was already crawling with news vans and reporters.
Having a camera shoved in his face was not the most welcoming sight to be greeted with after he was already worn out and exhausted, but he put on his best smile.
“Superboy, can you give us a statement on the recent fight?” One of the reporters asked, holding a bulky microphone right up to his face. He flinched back a step, smile faltering ever so slightly, an uncomfortable rumble building up in the back of his throat.
“Well, of course,” Kon said, shifting his voice easily into something much more polite, “Let’s just say it would have gone on a lot longer if it weren’t for me swooping in to help at the last minute.” He smiled, ever so charming, peering at the reporter over the top frame of his sunglasses.
The reporter’s expression didn’t even waver; she nodded to herself, the camera still pointed right at Kon, well, right at Superboy, the one they actually wanted to talk to. She leveled him with a frankly scrutinizing glare, and Kon suddenly felt like he had gotten caught at a bad time.
“How are you and the other superheroes planning to accommodate for the damage done to the street and city infrastructure today?” It was a different journalist who asked the question this time, and through the overlapping voices, Kon barely managed to pick her out in the crowd, fiery red curls and round glasses poking out from the crowd.
“Well, uhm,” Kon faltered, he didn’t know those specifics of the superhero stuff. He knew they often had meetings about it and would help out to fix what they could, and he always made sure to put things back where they belonged. But he didn’t know what the press wanted to hear. “I’m sure the other heroes are planning on some kind of meeting to discuss.”
The reporter frowned at that. Kon really hoped that wasn’t the wrong thing to say. He could never tell with the press. Normally, he had a bit more guidance for what to say or how to act on camera, but now he was tired, uncomfortable, and really wished to be at home.
He made a noise from the back of his throat, a low rumble barely audible, one that definitely wouldn’t get picked up by all the cameras and microphones, but he could hear it in his head. Something akin to a high-pitched whine spilled from his lips, a vocalization that the reporters must not have heard because no one even batted an eye.
He was bombarded with question after question, each one more difficult to answer than the last. Kon suddenly found an appreciation for the other heroes who had to answer these questions on a daily basis (and an understanding as to why they avoided talking to the press). He tried not to curl in on himself, still whining softly under his breath, noises he didn’t even realize he was making bubbling up from his throat.
But then, there was a small lull, a sudden shift in the entire mood of the crowd, almost like a hush had fallen, a small vacuum placed all around this twenty-foot area. It was only a second, barely enough time for Kon to process it, but then the reporters had shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable, especially the red-haired woman who had been making him uncomfortable.
Kon took a step back, prepared to make his grand escape, when he backed up right into a solid figure behind him. He turned quickly, shrinking down with an audible intake of breath, standing below the towering figure of none other than Superman himself. He wore a peculiar look on his face, eyebrows slightly furrowed, lip pulled back into what could have been mistaken as a smile, but only seemed full of forced politeness.
He looked angry. Well, angry in the way Superman never was. Protective, maybe? But why would he be looking at the reporters like that?
And then Kon heard the strange rumbling sound coming right from the center of Superman’s throat. Kon shrunk back, but this time, put himself right behind Superman and out of sight of the press.
Whatever the older superhero said was lost on Kon, whose ears only focused on that constant, almost comforting rumble. He could feel it when he pressed his back against Superman’s back, the small vibrations matching with his own. He sighed in what felt like relief, comfort maybe, safety? Kon didn’t know. Only that, for some reason, Superman had stepped in, expertly removing Kon from the situation.
Maybe Kon had said something he wasn’t supposed to, that was usually the only reason he got pulled away from the press. Although surprisingly, Superman didn’t seem angry with him, the frustration was peculiarly aimed at the reporters with a backward glare as Kon was dragged away by the shoulder to somewhere with fewer people.
“Th—Thanks,” Kon mumbled, barely loud enough to be heard over the clammering of people and cars.
Superman startled at that, whatever spell that had come over him broken in an instant, he smiled bashfully, “Oh, well, I know how reporters can be sometimes.”
Kon liked helping Ma in the kitchen. He wasn’t a great cook by any means, nor was he good with a knife or cheese grater, or knowing what a dish needed just by the taste, and he often couldn’t control his own strength when working with anything delicate and… well… Kon just wasn’t really good in the kitchen, if he were being honest.
But somehow, he hadn’t gotten banned yet, although Kon was sure that was coming down the line eventually. Ma was patient enough with him, though, even when Kon heard her sigh softly whenever he messed something up (again), she never said anything other than a soft “it’s alright, hon.” while she fixed what she could of his mess and tried not to make him feel bad. He always felt bad.
He was just trying to help make some stew for tonight’s dinner. All he had to do was cut the carrots, freshly grown and plucked out of the garden this morning. He held the knife as steadily as he could in his hand, still fighting against his constant tremors to angle it right on the board.
It was hard to control his own strength sometimes, and it didn’t help that he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, or his mind from overthinking everything he was doing. Kon was really getting tired of fighting with his own powers all the time.
Stew didn’t require wood shavings or pieces of broken countertop.
Kon saw the look on Ma’s face with a sad, painfully pinched rumble building in the back of his throat. His face burned with shame, and even though he was a good few inches taller than Ma, he felt like the size of an ant as she looked over the damage.
She wasn’t angry; she never got angry with Kon, at least not anywhere he could hear or see. But she sighed, and Kon wilted.
“Maybe it might be good for you to go help Pa in the field for a bit,” Ma put her hand on Kon’s arm gently, rubbing up and down in a gesture that was supposed to be comforting. “Get some of that energy out.”
And, well, Kon was due to get kicked out of the kitchen eventually. He just couldn’t help the small, pained whine from bubbling up out of his throat, guilt and shame mixing into one big embarrassing lump right in the center of his chest. Ma patted his arm and smiled as gently as he could.
Kon swallowed thickly and nodded, muttering his apologies as he left out the back door to find Pa.
He didn’t know how Clark did it. He was a good cook, nowhere near as good as Ma, but he could at least cut vegetables without breaking the chopping board. He could mash potatoes without getting shards of glass everywhere from the bowl. He could not destroy everything that he touched because he couldn’t control his own strength.
Kon kicked at the grass as he wound his way to the cornfields to find Pa, a soft gurgling noise building up in his throat, discomfort and guilt seeping into the sounds like water from a leaky tap. It made him feel marginally less like he was about to cry just to get the sounds out, so he just continued while he helped Pa with the field.
Kon didn’t even know Clark was coming over for dinner. But he was still beating himself up over damaging the countertop when the sun started to get low in the horizon and dinner was just about ready. He heard the familiar sound of heavy footsteps ease out onto the back porch, and Kon was already peeking his head out through the tall stalks of corn to see.
Clark picked Kon out immediately, bright blue eyes locking onto him like a hawk. Kon shrank a little under his gaze and tried to turn to let Pa know that Clark was here so the old man could greet his son. But then Clark was at Kon’s side, fast enough that he had to have used his powers.
“Did something happen?” Clark asked slowly, picking through his words carefully, a hint of confusion deep in his tone. He stared at Kon with scrutiny, looking him up and down as if he could deduce everything that was wrong with him just with a stare.
And then Kon realized he had still been making that soft grumbling noise. And surprisingly, Clark was making a very similar sound, right from the back of his throat, a low-pitched, heavy rumble, one that seemed to act like a balm, soothing a part of Kon’s brain that he didn’t even know was still upset.
He looked away from Clark and felt shame rising to his cheeks once again, his face going red in embarrassment. Clark put a hand on his shoulder gently, still rumbling softly.
“I broke the cutting board trying to help Ma,” Kon mumbled, keening softly.
Clark seemed surprised by the admission, “Oh,” He smiled softly, doing his best to be reassuring even though Kon could see a hint of slight discomfort rising to his eyes. He was out of his depth. He always was when it came to Kon.
“I think she might be upset with me,” Kon added unhelpfully, refusing to look Clark in the face.
“Of course she’s not,” Clark said, rubbing Kon’s shoulder, “It was an accident, I’m sure, it can be fixed, most of the stuff in this house has needed to be fixed at least twice.”
Kon frowned and stared down at his feet with a low whine. Clark balked.
“I think she’s more relieved that you aren’t as bad as I was,” Clark tried, his voice dripping with a hint of playfulness, “At least you get to handle knives at your age.” And there was that soft, soothing rumble again. Kon couldn’t help the way he leaned into Clark, matching his vocalization with one of his own.
When Clark laughed, Kon couldn’t help but muster a small giggle. “How long did it take you?”
“Not until I was 18,” Clark said as casually as he could muster, and the fact of it seemed so absurd that Kon couldn’t help the laugh that spat from his lips. Clark looked embarrassed, his cheeks heating up in a very good impression of how Kon was looking right about now. “You better enjoy your knife-wielding privileges while they last, you’re lucky you get to use them.”
Kon laughed again, a hint of something deeper and much more alien rumbling in his chest as he did so. Clark crowed softly and joyfully in response.
“I’ll help you fix it after dinner, how about that?” Clark added once Kon had quieted down, “I’m sure Ma would appreciate that.”
“Okay,” Kon said softly, something light and comfortable settling in his chest. Clark ruffled his hair and pulled away, a soft smile on his lips.
Kon jerked himself awake with a panicked gargle, a scream caught in his throat, and a cough easily bubbling up to the surface. His body shivered violently in the chill of the night air, his pajama shirt clinging to his skin from sweat, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, blood rushing in his ears so fast he could barely hear anything else around him. A sharp whine pulled from his lips, distress palpable on his tongue.
He looked around frantically, eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness of the room, the faint glow of the moonlight spilling in through the window giving him only the vague shapes of the room around him.
He moved, sheets rustling, tugging on his legs as he tried and struggled to detangle himself from the soft, worn fabric. Visions of his nightmare clung to the back of his eyelids, white sterile walls, painful green lights, hands touching him, grabbing him, pulling him. It made him feel sick.
Tears sprang to his eyes before he even realized he was sobbing silently, whining and growling in an attempt to pull himself out of the panic that dug its claws so deeply into his shaking, trembling form. He clutched his fingers tightly around the fabric of his bedsheets, curling over his knees and gasping in short, choppy gasps of air.
He wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t in the lab. He was out. He was free.
He was at the farm with Ma and Pa. He was in Clark’s old bedroom.
He was Kon, Kon-El, Connor Kent. He was out of the lab.
Kon let out a high-pitched whine, tugging at his curls with a sharp jerk of his wrist, gasping for breath and coughing around the tears and sobs that wrenched from his throat. He whined and keened and wailed, unfortunately inhuman noises spilling from his lips before he even knew what he was doing, anything to try to calm himself down.
The sound of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching his bedroom door made him startle, blood rushing in his ears and his heart pounding so hard it made him feel nauseous. He jerked himself out of the sheets, forcing his body to move, forcing himself to run.
If he could get to the window, he could get out. The moon was so bright tonight that he could use that to see, even when his lackluster night vision made it impossible for him to see anything in the dark. Kon stumbled, legs still tangled in the blankets around him, and he nearly crashed to the floor before he caught himself.
His body ached all over. He couldn’t stop trembling.
He could barely hear anything over the panicked voices in his head, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, his own stupid noises.
The bedroom door slowly creaked open. Kon ducked his head and whined, holding himself as still as possible, willing himself to curl up smaller so that maybe he wouldn’t be found.
A soft familiar rumble came from the doorway, soft, kind, and almost matching in panicked tones to Kon’s own whines and growls.
He froze, tugging at his curls with silent tears rolling down his face and choking him, making it difficult for him to breathe. He tried not to cough to not alert the person to his location, but his whimpering had already given him away.
“Kon-El?” A soft voice, way too soft to be one of the doctors, his name, a foreign sound to come from them, soft on their lips in a way they never were when they spoke to him. Kon crooned pathetically, jerking his arms to wedge beneath him so he could maybe push himself up to a sitting position.
He couldn’t see anything in the dark; he was never able to see anything. All he could do was make out the vague shapes of darkened blobs around him. He wished he had better dark vision.
Everything around him seemed to be shaking, and he couldn’t focus his eyes even if he could see. He couldn’t move.
The footsteps got closer, and Kon noticed a pair of bright, glowing blue eyes peering at him from the darkness. That soft rumbling noise continued, Kon leaned into it, willing himself to move but unable to get up from the floor where he was wedged between the wall and his bed.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Clark’s voice was so gentle in a way that Kon had never heard him before, all soft edges and crooning rumble. Kon latched onto it like it was a drop of water in the middle of the desert. Clark knelt down at the foot of the bed, peering at Kon with an unreadable expression, the only thing visible to Kon being the glow of his eyes.
Kon tried to say something, anything that might explain this situation he found himself in. But all that came out was another whimper, something high-pitched and breathy, full of agonizing panic.
Clark reached out for him, and at first, Kon flinched away like a startled animal, but he crooned softly, humming and rumbling in a voice so alien to Clark that it seemed to surprise both of them. Kon uncurled himself from the small ball he had bundled into, the sound going right to the part of his brain that he didn’t fully understand.
Kon allowed himself to be bundled up by Clark’s arms, pulled out from his small, cramped corner that was doing nothing more than causing him to panic harder. Clark pulled Kon close to his chest, and Kon buried his face against the crook of his neck, crying and whining deep in his throat, trying to get himself as close as possible to Clark, listening to the comforting rumble and chuffs he made, soothing himself on the comfortable clicking noises.
A hand found its way to his hair, smoothing back his sweaty curls, the other running down his spine in a way no one normally did. Kon completely melted, still sniffling and hiccuping with sobs that were somewhat caught in his throat, but he let himself go boneless in the safety of Clark’s arms.
The rumbles in the back of Clark’s throat screamed comfort, it screamed safety, and it filled Kon with something he didn’t really know how to describe. A warm feeling bubbling up right in the center of his chest as he cried and nuzzled his face into the crook of Clark’s shoulder, feeling his warm hands run up and down his back comfortingly.
Clark said nothing, at least nothing audible by human standards, but he didn’t need to. This was good enough for Kon, cradled in his arms, falling deep into instincts that neither of them fully understood, crooning and whining softly. Kon felt safe in a way that he wasn’t fully used to.
His panicked heart rate settled after some time. And soon enough, Kon was beginning to drift off, hands still clutching the front of Clark’s sleep shirt. Vaguely, Kon remembered Clark leaving for Metropolis after dinner, but he didn’t think too hard about the details, his brain already shutting down into the realm of sleep.
He closed his eyes and felt the soft vibrations of Clark’s vocalization and found himself already drifting off.